My Life Flows On

DUBLIN, Calif. - KITT, the flame-throwing, river-jumping, talking muscle car from the `80s TV show "Knight Rider," is up for sale. Restored to its debut-season glory, the modified black 1982 Pontiac Trans Am is offered at $149,995 at a Dublin auto dealership. Johnny "Vette" Verhoek of Kassabian Motors has had the car, officially called Knight Industries Two Thousand, on display for about a month....
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Although it cannot achieve the 300 mph speeds that KITT reached, soar 50 feet in the air or throw smoke bombs, key features of the star car are intact. Perhaps most important, the red scanner light on the nose glows and makes a humming noise....
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The car belongs to Tim Russo of Livermore, a Kassabian customer who figured now was a good time to test the market, with the 25th anniversary of the show's debut coming up.

Russo purchased the car 10 years ago at an auction in San Diego, and has spent the last decade finding parts to restore it.

TOKYO - Momofuku Ando, the Japanese inventor of instant noodles — a dish that has sustained American college students for decades — has died. He was 96.

Nissin Food Products Co., the company Ando founded, said on its Web site that he died Friday after suffering a heart attack.

Born in Taiwan, Ando founded his company in 1948 from a humble family operation. Faced with food shortages in post-World War II Japan, Ando thought a quality, convenient noodle product would help feed the masses.

In 1958, his "Chicken Ramen" — the first instant noodle — was introduced after many trials. Following its success, the company added other products, such as the "Cup Noodle" in 1971.
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SEATTLE - Researchers at the University of Washington say all that holiday baking and eating has an environmental impact — Puget Sound is being flavored by cinnamon and vanilla. "Even something as fun as baking for the holiday season has an environmental effect," said Rick Keil, an associate professor of chemical oceanography. "When we bake and change the way we eat, it has an impact on what the environment sees. To me it shows the connectedness."

Keil and UW researcher Jacquelyn Neibauer's weekly tests of treated sewage sent into the sound from the West Point treatment plant in Magnolia showed cinnamon, vanilla and artificial vanilla levels rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, with the biggest spike right after Thanksgiving.

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So far, the research has turned up no evidence that snickerdoodles are harming sea creatures, but their research does lead to some serious environmental questions. Fish rely heavily on their sense of smell to locate food, for example, and, in the case of salmon, to find their way back to their home stream to spawn.

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Keil's findings present a light side of what scientists say is potentially a serious situation. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey and other agencies have documented that antibiotics, contraceptives, perfumes, painkillers, antidepressants and other substances pass through the sewage system into waterways.
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urban_nature

HOUSTON - Texas has awarded more than $450,000 to a man who was exonerated by DNA evidence after spending 18 years in prison for a sexual assault conviction.

Arthur Mumphrey was released from prison in January after his lawyer found DNA evidence clearing him in the rape of a 13-year-old girl. Mumphrey had been sentenced in 1986 to 35 years in prison.

Gov. Rick Perry pardoned Mumphrey in March, clearing his record and making him eligible for compensation. Under state law, a person pardoned based on innocence is eligible for up to $25,000 for each year in prison with a cap at $500,000.

His brother, Charles, confessed to the rape while serving time in jail for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, shortly after his brother's release. No criminal charges will be filed against Charles Mumphrey because the statute of limitations has expired, prosecutors said.

NEW YORK - The city's waterfront is getting cleaner, and bothersome river critters not seen in hundreds of years are once again attacking wooden ships and piers.

The waters were once so filthy that early 20th-century sailors could be sure their boats would be safe from such threats — because organisms simply couldn't survive in the muck. But scientists are now seeing a resurgence in gribbles, shrimp-like crustaceans that grow to about one-17th of an inch in length and attack wood from the outside, and shipworms, which latch onto the outside of wood and burrow inward, growing up to several feet long as they devour the material.
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BEIJING - Chinese investigators have concluded that an activist who said he was paralyzed after assailants broke his neck inflicted the injury on himself, his son said Thursday.

"We cannot accept this decision," said Fu Bing, whose father, Fu Xiancai, criticized the government's treatment of people who were forced to relocate as a result of the Three Gorges dam project.

Fu Xiancai was injured three weeks after German public television broadcast an interview in which he said he had been threatened and beaten for complaining about inadequate compensation for relocated residents.

He says that on June 8, he was called into the Zigui County Public Security Bureau in Hubei province and criticized for his television appearance. He was attacked after leaving the police station, he said.
[...]

The New York-based group Human Rights in China [...] said authorities were "unlawfully pressuring Fu Xiancai to forgo any legitimate appeals process and refusing to disclose the experts who determined that Fu could have single-handedly struck himself from behind with such force as to shatter three of his vertebrae."
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BEIJING - An underground video sweeping Chinese cyberspace has half the country cracking up.
( Read more... )

Chen withdrew his threat to sue. His producers are now talking about suing over property rights.
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LONDON - The ravens at the Tower of London have been moved indoors to protect them from the threat of bird flu, the man in charge of the birds said Monday.

According to legend, if the ravens leave the 11th century fortress on the River Thames, its White Tower will crumble and the Kingdom of England will fall. King Charles II decreed in the 17th century that there must always be six ravens at the Tower.

"Although we don't like having to bring the Tower ravens inside, we believe it is the safest thing to do for their own protection, given the speed that the virus is moving across Europe," said Derrick Coyle, the Yeoman warder who is also the Tower's raven master.

A spokeswoman for the Tower said the six birds were taken inside as a "contingency measure" and will live in custom-built aviaries. The ravens are named Branwen, Hugine, Munin, Gwyllum, Thor and Baldrick.

"CLEVELAND - In the next few weeks, five men and seven women will secretly visit the Cleveland Clinic to interview for the chance to have a radical operation that's never been tried anywhere in the world....
This is no extreme TV makeover. It is a medical frontier being explored by a doctor who wants the public to understand what she is trying to do.
It is this: to give people horribly disfigured by burns, accidents or other tragedies a chance at a new life. Today's best treatments still leave many of them with freakish, scar-tissue masks that don't look or move like natural skin...."

"First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the same cliff, Turkish media reported.
In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the pile got higher and the fall more cushioned, Aksam reported."